07/19/2012

TIME on Americans' Stuff

My personal friends are familiar with my personal Stuff Abatement Program, in which my wife and I are categorically searching our house for stuff we don't need to dispose of and evaluating all ongoing purchases against the odds that whatever is bought will ever be on a shelf unused. My hope is that when we eventually move out, our possessions will fit in the trunk of our car.

The UCLA survey that predicated the blog post targeted families with children but we can attest that this phenomenon afflicts the aging childless as well.

The idea for a new book by UCLA researchers sounds pretty boring. A team of anthropologists went into 32 typical homes—middle-class, dual-income families, with school-age children—and catalogued what they saw. Sorta like going to a bunch of open houses, or perhaps just looking around your own home. Only when described in the cold, nonjudgmental language of academics, the average American family’s stuff sounds like an obsessive hoarder’s collection. In the first home they entered, researchers listed more than 2,000 possessions on display in a mere three rooms.

As Dave Barry once wrote - no matter how hard you try, you can't empty a house.